According to Li Auto’s Weibo news, within 72 hours of the release of the Li Auto L9, more than 30,000 users paid 5,000 yuan for reservations. How enthusiastic are these 30,000 users?

Summary:

1. From the data point of view, the ideal L9 is indeed selling well. According to Li Auto Weibo news, 72 hours after the release of Li Auto L9, more than 30,000 users paid 5,000 yuan for reservations - how enthusiastic are these 30,000 users? Even the server of Li Auto App was down.

2. Ideal L9 is officially launched. This should be Ideal’s highlight moment. But Li Xiang's speech caused controversy again. "If the driver has a boss in the car, the driver is a person with a lower level and a lower status." This sentence made Li Xiang look arrogant and full of old-fashioned hierarchical concepts.

3. Li Xiang doesn’t know that the extended-range electric technology will only be a problem of excessive solutions, but for the sake of “money”, L9 still insists on the extended-range electric technology. However, if there is a lack of ideal technical reserves in the early stage, it will be difficult to make up lessons later.

Author丨Zhang Mian Editor丨Lu Da

Ideal L9 is officially launched. This should be Ideal’s highlight moment. After all, this is what Li Xiang calls "the best family flagship SUV within 5 million yuan."

However, Li Xiang’s speech caused controversy again.

Recently, Li Xiang answered the question asked by the host during the Ideal L9 live broadcast of "Ideal L9": "Why is there a small table on the right side of the second row of the Ideal L9 but no small table on the left?" The answer was, "If the driver has a boss in the car, the driver is a person of a lower level and a lower status."

As soon as these words came out, everything led to doubts about Li Xiang's values.

Afterwards, Li Xiang clarified on social media, saying that in the product definition of many large cars, the first purpose is to take care of the boss in the rear, and the driver's importance level is the lowest, so the driver's comfort and experience can be sacrificed. At the same time, Li Auto official also responded that the interview video was maliciously edited and distorted, which damaged the reputation and image of Li Xiang and Li Auto, and would use legal weapons to defend their rights.

But netizens don’t buy it, because it is obvious that no matter how reporters induce or how the video is edited, being able to say "the driver is a low-level, low-status person" will inevitably lead to doubts about this person. .

Li Xiang’s ideal

Li Xiang has caused controversy in his remarks, and many old users of the Chinese Internet have become accustomed to it.

For example, in April 2020, Luckin Coffee was exposed for financial fraud. Its chairman Lu Zhengyao posted a long post in WeChat Moments, saying: "I am very ashamed and sad. No matter what the final investigation results of the independent committee are, I will Take due responsibility." Li Xiang forwarded it directly on Weibo and called it "Sha Bi."

In August of the same year, at the Ideal Auto User Day event, Li Xiang, who couldn’t hold his breath, swore at the people who were against the extended-range program - "TMD, a bunch of people who mess with technology, they attack us every day, what about extended range? Electricity is a backward technology. What the hell are they doing? Let a group of people who have no user thinking and no care about users research the technical route every day. What kind of technical route is this? "

Maybe! It was becoming famous at a young age that gave Li Xiang the confidence to speak out.

Li Xiang was born in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province in October 1981. He graduated from Shijiazhuang No. 40 Middle School with a high school degree. In high school, Li Xiang became obsessed with personal websites and even built one. “At first, I did it for fun, but I like to be competitive. If others do well, I will do better than others. .”

He put all his favorite computer hardware products online, and many people went online to communicate with him. After 3 or 5 months, the number of visits reached 10,000 people/day, and advertisers were also attracted.

At that time, Li Xiang's website had an advertising revenue of 6,000 to 7,000 yuan per month, and even earned 100,000 yuan before the college entrance examination. This also prompted Li Xiang to make an important decision - to drop out of school and start a business.After

invited Fan Zheng, and Shao Zhen to join, the website called "Graphics Card Home" also officially changed its name to Paopao.com, and its business scope expanded from graphics cards to all computer-related categories. Li Xiang also came to Beijing from Shijiazhuang to pursue his career.

In 2003, Paopao.com’s monthly activity ranked third in the industry, second only to “ Pacific Computer Network ” and “Zhongguancun Online”. In 2004, Paopao.com had revenue of nearly 20 million and profit of 10 million. This year, Li Xiang is 24 years old and has been in business for 6 years.

But the market was always not friendly enough to the third place. Soon, the growth of Paopao.com encountered a bottleneck, and Li Xiang also started his second business. He began to incubate car home inside Paopao.com. —The latter’s business model is similar to that of Paopao.com, except that the product was changed from IT products to cars. At that time, it was the golden period of rapid development of China’s automobile industry, and passenger car sales were growing at double digits every year.

Without any promotion costs, Autohome has gained the attention of many users with its neutral and objective content and innovations in databases, real-life pictures, etc. The content-driven model has saved Autohome a lot of traffic purchase costs. In just four years, Autohome has entered the top five domestic vertical automotive websites.

In 2008, Autohome’s traffic exceeded that of all automotive vertical websites, becoming the number one in the industry. But in Li Xiang's memory, he did not have a good year that year because they encountered a financial crisis. There are fewer advertisers, and customers are using the excuse of billing deadlines to default on their payments.

When he was most embarrassed, Li Xiang only had 10,000 yuan in his account, so he had to borrow money to pay wages to more than 200 employees.

The greater pressure came from investors, who accused Li Xiang of being unprofessional and causing difficulties in financing the company. “Once, several of our shareholders were sitting at the same table with us, and some shareholders pointed their noses and cursed. We said that we would kick me and another partner out of the company. "

It was also this year that Li Xiang sold 55% of the shares of Paopao.com to Telstra . At that time, in addition to PCPOP, Paopao.com owned other companies. It also includes Autohome, which is on the rise. In 2012, Qin Zhi became the CEO of Autohome; in 2013, Li Xiang was appointed as the president of Autohome. According to the company's articles of association, he needs to report to Qin Zhi.

On December 11, 2013, Autohome was listed. Aodian held 75.1% of the shares, while Li Xiang only held 5.3% of the shares. ; In November 2014, after the stock lock-up period, Li Xiang sold less than 4% of his shares.

In June 2015, Li Xiang resigned as President of Autohome. In July of the same year, Li Xiang started his third business, Chehejia. In May 2016, Chehejia announced the completion of a Series A financing of RMB 780 million, with a valuation of RMB 2.98 billion.

This time, Li Xiang learned the lesson of Autohome and firmly took control in his own hands. In August 2021, Li Auto was listed in Hong Kong, with Li Xiang holding 22.6% of the shares and 69.8% of the voting rights. The largest external shareholder, Wang Xing, founder of Meituan , holds 19.1% of the shares and only has 7.5% voting rights.

ideal extended-range model

The period when Chehejia was established coincided with the golden age of domestic new energy vehicle entrepreneurship - starting from 2013, when my country's new energy vehicle subsidy policy entered the second stage, the subsidies increased to private consumption. The intensity of market tilt. At the same time, in the past few years from 2011 to 2015, my country's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles were close to 450,000 units, and the market expanded rapidly.

But Li Xiang is still the latest among the three "Wei Xiaoli" to enter the market - Weilai was established in November 2014, Xiaopeng was established in 2015. In fact, it was already established in 2014. Ideal Automobile was only officially established in July 2015.

However, unlike the other two methods of first achieving mass production through foundries, Li Auto made plans to build its own factory from the beginning. In August 2016, Li Auto began to build its own factory in Wujin Technology Development Zone, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province Manufacturing base.

The self-built factory also resulted in the final delivery time of Ideal being relatively late. It was not until December 2019 that Li Auto delivered the first Ideal ONE. For comparison, Weilai began delivery in June 2018, and Xiaopeng started delivering in December 2018. Deliveries start on month.

Since its launch at the end of 2019, Ideal ONE has sold a total of 170,000 units. About 90,000 units were delivered in 2021, which is equivalent to the sales of three NIO cars and two Xpeng cars. It is also the best-selling model among more than 300,000 new energy vehicles, except for the and Tesla .

However, Ideal ONE has also encountered a lot of controversy. The first one is the extended-range electric technology it uses.

Unlike Weilai, which focuses on free charging piles, charging cars and battery swapping services, Li Xiang’s idea is to install fuel tanks on electric vehicles, which is a “range extension system” - the principle is to install it on electric vehicles A fuel engine uses a range extender to charge the battery to increase the cruising range when the battery capacity is insufficient. In other words, the range extension module is like a large "power bank" that can always charge the car battery pack, but its energy comes from fuel.

However, the industry is not optimistic about this, because some international manufacturers have already tried this technology before Li Xiang, including Porsche, the inventor of this technology, also chose to shelve it. In addition, BMW , Cadillac, Chevrolet, Nissan, Mazda and other international brands have also adopted range-extended electric technology, but in the end they all gave up.

The core reason is that from the perspective of technology and cost, even today, extended-range electric technology is still not an optimal solution. First, the efficiency is too low. Range-extended technology needs to convert thermal energy into electrical energy first, and then convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. Compared with gasoline vehicles or pure electric vehicles, it has one more conversion process, resulting in a significant increase in energy loss; secondly, the design In terms of manufacturing, since extended-range electric vehicles have two power systems, this means that car companies must master the technology of both systems, which brings not only manufacturing costs, but also the research and development costs of a new platform. For consumers, the two different systems also lead to a significant increase in the probability of car problems and subsequent maintenance costs.

This is also the main reason why pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have attracted many car companies to accelerate their layout, and 48V light hybrid models are also ready to go, but the extended range has always been ignored.

Objectively speaking, the reason why Ideal is able to develop extended-range electric technology is mainly because it uses a combination of internal combustion engine + motor to solve the range anxiety problem of pure electric vehicles, and it can also solve the license plate issue as a new energy vehicle - —In other words, to a large extent, it is due to compliance with the market, but it is not a victory of technology.

However, the range-extended electric technology has its own limitations. Even if the Ideal L9 further improves the quality and efficiency of the extended-range electric technology, its inefficient nature cannot be changed.

As the person in charge of the company, Li Xiang is not unaware that the extended-range electric technology will only be a problem of excessive solutions, nor is he unaware that the current market is still in the early stages of development and consumers have less knowledge reserves. , high tolerance, so it can recognize the extended-range electric technology. However, with the deeper layout of charging piles, the popularization of 100-degree batteries and the improvement of charging speed, the battery life of pure electric vehicles will further increase, and charging and swapping will also become more difficult. Fast and convenient, by then, the most competitive cruising range of extended-range electric vehicles will no longer be prominent.

However, if there is no ideal technical reserve in the early stage, it will be difficult to make up for the lessons in the later stage.

Li Xiang’s opportunism

Objectively speaking, the prerequisite for the success of Ideal ONE is to be able to obtain the new energy green license. For the environment where blue licenses are tight in first-tier cities, it does not hesitate to provide a "shortcut" to obtain the license.

Judging from the three-year research and development cycle of main models, Ideal still insists on the extended-range plan for the second model. To put it bluntly, it is because I feel that the money is too profitable and I want to cut another wave of leeks.

It’s no wonder that along the way, Li Xiang has been repeatedly criticized by industry insiders as “all for speculation and lacks awe in making cars.” Including the announcement in the first half of this year that he was forced to increase prices due to rising battery costs, netizens also ridiculed “This It’s too embarrassing to follow the trend and increase the price of batteries.”

Prior to this, Ideal ONE's borrowingism was also widely criticized. From a technical perspective, Ideal ONE's entire vehicle borrowed heavily from Toyota Highlander (chassis) and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (drive), plus Li Xiang claimed that The results of many years of accumulation and "research" in the automobile industry have been combined to create a large new energy vehicle suitable for Chinese families.

is equipped with a 1.2T three-cylinder DAM12TD range-extended engine, which is derived from Dongan Power, a subsidiary of Changan ; the inverter and controller system matching the engine are jointly developed by Lister and Delphi ; the motor is also Provided by United Electronics; the rear "3-in-1" electric drive assembly and dual electronic control system are provided by Inovance ; the battery and cell technology are provided by CATL .

In the ideal L9 era, this kind of borrowingism is still the same. It is mainly used for publicity. In addition to finally changing from a three-cylinder to a four-cylinder engine, other things such as five-screen three-dimensional space interaction, self-developed assisted driving functions, etc. Some icing on the cake, another highlight - the range extender provided by the joint venture established by Lideal and Xinchen Dynamics has optimized the L9's fuel mode heat engine energy consumption to 5.9L/100km, but given that the L9 is also larger and more It is heavier, 220kg heavier than the ideal ONE, and the ultimate fuel saving effect has to be said.

This also further reflects that the ideal L9 is also the product of a business strategy rather than a product of a technical strategy.

However, Li Xiang may not care about this at all, because judging from the data, the ideal L9 is indeed selling well. According to Li Auto’s Weibo news, within 72 hours of the release of the Li Auto L9, more than 30,000 users paid 5,000 yuan for reservations. How enthusiastic are these 30,000 users? Even the server of Li Auto App was down.

On June 24, Li Auto’s stock price surged by more than 5% at the opening, breaking through all moving averages and setting a new all-time high. In addition to the factors of new car release, it also benefited from the "flashback" between Ideal and CATL.

On June 23, CATL (300750.SZ) released the CTP3.0 Kirin battery, with system integration reaching a new high in the world and volume utilization. Breaking through 72%, the energy density can reach 255Wh/kg, achieving a vehicle endurance of 1,000 kilometers. Under the same chemical system and the same battery pack size, the power of the Kirin battery pack is 13% higher than that of the 4680 system. It will be mass-produced and launched in 2023.

Subsequently, Li Xiang forwarded the relevant news on Weibo with the text "See you next year", which seemed to be acknowledgment that the pure electric model launched by Li Auto next year will be equipped with Kirin batteries. Relevant people from CATL confirmed to the media on the evening of June 23 that Li Auto’s new energy vehicles have been confirmed to be equipped with Kirin batteries.

It is not surprising that Ideal’s stock price has increased after many good things. In fact, if Li Xiang hadn’t been unscrupulous and added some negative factors to this series of good things, even with the controversy surrounding extended-range electric technology , but for Li Xiang and Li Auto, this is still a new and good start.

However, when we take a longer view, as competitors pay more and more attention to the cultivation of market segments, the market for family "dad cars" is bound to usher in a round of melee, and when competitors all market segments After occupying them one by one, how much living space is left for the ideal car? What kind of technical advantages can the pure electric model launched by Li Xiang, an elite born in the 1980s, plan to launch in 2023?